


Contact High

by bonn



Series: run, run, run, [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bisexual Sokka (Avatar), M/M, Past Jet/Zuko (Avatar), and welcome all of you new members of chan nation, content warning - the smiths, heads up this is incredibly emo, it's about the YEARNING it's about the HANDS, listen. i have no defence for writing a the smiths song au i just did it, please know i AM a morrissey anti, stoner suki nation rise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26470594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonn/pseuds/bonn
Summary: Sokka didn’t say a word when he pulled up, didn’t say a word as he kicked Zuko’s door open from the inside, didn’t say a word as he handed him the iPhone charger plugged into the cigarette lighter, because his shit-box car stillhada cigarette lighter.Zuko didn’t say anything, either. Didn’t thank Sokka because he knew exactly what Sokka would say:“You don’t have to thank me. I’m your friend.”Friend. He hated the wordfriend.-aka: Zuko pines to the tune of a song by the Smiths
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: run, run, run, [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2051064
Comments: 71
Kudos: 539





	Contact High

**Author's Note:**

> started writing it. had a breakdown. bon appetit. 
> 
> hello zukka nation please enjoy my descent into madness love you have fun x

Zuko had been using boys as a means to an end for a while now. _Distraction_ , that was the word. He knew it was unhealthy, he had been told it was unhealthy over and over again. Mai had told him, Uncle had told him, Sokka had told him. If his father had cared enough to send him to a therapist, his therapist _definitely_ would have told him. But if his father had cared enough to send him to a therapist, he probably wouldn’t need one, and he probably wouldn’t need boys.

He knew it was unhealthy, but that didn’t make it less effective.

Sokka had been one of those boys, once upon a time, or he was supposed to have been. He smiled when Zuko talked, and he picked him to be partners for class assignments, and Zuko had moved in, closer, closer, ‘til one day he was sitting on the edge of Sokka’s bed and Sokka had turned to him and said, “I’m really glad we’re friends.”

_Friends_. Zuko squirmed at the idea, at the lost potential. Sokka was _hot_ , and Ozai was hateful, and Zuko just wanted to disappear for a while. He had not come here to make a _friend_.

Zuko had never had a friend in his life, not one he’d made on his own, not one that was just _his_. Something sparked in his heart, something unpleasant and sharp. He would finally have something that Azula didn’t have. Something _real_.

He hadn’t smiled, but he’d said, “Yeah, me too.”

And Zuko had backed off as much as he could bear to and found another boy.

The thing that was interesting about Jet was that he wanted to use Zuko as much as Zuko wanted to use him. Which was fine, for a while. Jet had a possibly even more fucked up home life than Zuko did, so he probably needed it just as much.

Here was the thing, though: turns out being used fucking sucked.

Sokka picked up on the first ring. Zuko had been sitting with him, once, when Suki called him, and Sokka had smirked and waited to pick it up. “Gotta let it ring a few times so you don’t look too eager,” he’d said, before finally answering.

Sokka never waited to answer Zuko’s calls, and he didn’t know what to make of that. It could mean that Sokka didn’t care about Zuko seeing him as eager or it could mean that he didn’t consider Zuko someone he even _could_ be eager to talk to. Both made Zuko’s stomach twist.

“Zuko?”

Zuko swallowed and stared down at his free hand. It was shaking.

“Hey, are you alright? Where are you?”

“I’m, um.” Zuko looked around. He’d started walking just to get away, and now he had no idea where he was. “I’m at a bus stop. Number 14.”

Sokka clicked his tongue, but it wasn’t directed at Zuko. Zuko heard him open his bedroom door, heard the slip of fabric as Sokka pressed his phone to his chest like that would stop Zuko from being able to hear him tell Katara he was going out for a bit.

Like it would stop Zuko from hearing Katara say, “I know he’s your friend but you can’t just drop everything and run to him every time he stubs his toe.”

“What route?” Sokka asked, and Zuko squinted in the dark at the timetable.

“203,” Zuko said. He thought about saying, “You don’t have to come.” He thought about saying, “I just needed to hear your voice.” But Sokka _did_ have to come, Zuko _wanted_ him to come. He said, “Sokka?”

Sokka didn’t respond.

“Sokka?” he said again, and pulled his phone away from his ear. It didn’t light up. He pressed the home button, desperately. Nothing. He’d known it was low on charge because he hadn’t been home in a day and a half and Jet didn’t have an iPhone and therefore didn’t have an iPhone charger, and Zuko was pretty sure that even if he _did_ have one he wouldn’t have let him use it anyway.

He debated just throwing his phone into the gutter, stomping it to pieces like Jet had dared him to do, but no, then he’d either have to live without a phone or ask his father for a new one. Both unthinkable, so he slipped it into his pocket and looked back at the bus timetable.

It didn’t announce route 203. It announced route 208.

He sat down on the curb and put his head in his hands. Fucking typical. It was dark and his vision was shit in broad daylight, of _course_ he had misread it. And the terrible part was that he _knew_ Sokka would arrive at stop 14, route 203, and find Zuko not there, and he would know _exactly_ what had happened. Sokka wouldn’t think for a second that Zuko had gotten up and walked away, because Zuko was too pathetic to get up and walk away.

He was too pathetic not to stay.

Sokka didn’t say a word when he pulled up, didn’t say a word as he kicked Zuko’s door open from the inside, didn’t say a word as he handed him the iPhone charger plugged into the cigarette lighter, because his shit-box car still _had_ a cigarette lighter.

Zuko didn’t say anything, either. Didn’t thank Sokka because he knew exactly what Sokka would say:

“You don’t have to thank me. I’m your friend.”

_Friend_. He hated the word _friend_.

Sokka broke first. “Am I taking you home?”

Zuko blanched. Home.

“My house, then. Were you at Jet’s?”

And he was trying, Zuko could _hear_ he was trying not to sound accusatory, but he _did_. “Yeah,” Zuko said, quietly, longing, longing for the part where they were past this moment and tucked up in Sokka’s king single bed. “Please don’t say anything.”

Sokka deflated. “Okay.”

It wasn’t always after an _encounter_ that Zuko called Sokka.

Sometimes it was like this: his house was so claustrophobic, so full of his father, so devoid of anything else, even of Azula, that he thought he was going to claw his own skin off. Zuko needed out of this place.

And Sokka always picked up on the first ring.

They sat in Zuko’s driveway for a long time while Sokka flicked through his Spotify Daily Mixes, reading each in full – yeah, even pathetic, besotted Zuko knew that was insane behaviour. Zuko stared back up at the house, knowing his father was watching via the security cameras, knowing Azula was peering out from behind the lace curtains across the attic window.

It was too quiet, it had _been_ too quiet. Silence for days and days, not a word spoken inside those walls. “Can we go somewhere loud? Somewhere with a lot of people?”

Sokka gave him a measured look, then shrugged. “I think Chan’s having a party.”

“When isn’t Chan having a party?”

And Sokka’s expression had morphed into something devilish and fond. “You make an excellent point, Zuko my friend.” _Friend_. “It’s still early; quesadillas?”

Which meant: buy me a quesadilla. Zuko could do that.

Zuko drove the car back to Sokka’s house, even though he was not strictly in possession of a licence, so that Sokka could eat his quesadilla before it got cold. Zuko hadn’t gotten one because he’d said he wasn’t hungry, which wasn’t exactly a lie. He was feeling queasy, though he didn’t know if it had to do with Sokka, his father, or the party. He knew if he said so, Sokka would drop the idea of the party all together, no questions asked, and they would spend the night on Sokka’s couch watching Youtube clips of Japanese game shows, and Sokka would make puppy dog eyes at Zuko until Zuko translated for him, even though none of it really needed translation.

“I like to feel included!” was what he always said. That was okay, because Zuko liked including him.

Sokka made Zuko change shirts four times before they left for Chan’s.

Chan was a boy a year ahead of them who was so aggressively heterosexual that Zuko had never even considered trying it with him, and whose level of parental supervision was so low it might be called non-existent. Zuko ached for what Chan had – what Chan _didn’t_ have.

They took an Uber, because Sokka wasn’t planning to drink, but he didn’t trust that he wouldn’t by accident, and Zuko was fine with that because it meant the two of them could sit in the back seat whispering to each other, and Sokka’s mouth could brush up against his ear, and Zuko could act as daring as he wanted because he would never, ever be able to return to the scene of the crime.

The house was bright, brilliant from every window, and there were a not inconsiderable amount of windows. It was loud, even before they got out of the Uber, and louder when they did. Zuko recognised the song, some mid-2000s J-Pop track Azula must have had on CD.

“I can’t believe you guys are here!”

Zuko let himself be dragged to the edge of the porch, where Suki was sitting with a small group, passing around a Gatorade-bottle bong.

“Zuko Nakamura at a Chan party? I must be dreaming.”

“ _Mai_?”

Mai, Azula’s friend, Mai, who he hadn’t seen in months, Mai, who he thought he might technically still be dating. Mai, who he could never in his wildest dreams imagine would be convinced to attend a Chan party.

Then again, he never thought _he’d_ be attending a Chan party, either.

“Come on Mai, don’t be chickenshit,” said the guy who was sitting next to her, holding out the bong. She took it, which didn’t surprise Zuko, because the only time he’d been high in his life was with Mai in the shed at the bottom of her uncle’s garden.

“You guys in?” asked Suki.

Sokka shook his head, and glanced over at Zuko. Sokka had picked him up that night from Mai’s uncle’s shed, and he clearly remembered how completely out of it Zuko had been, how empty. His expression, now, said _I’m not going to stop you if this is what you need_.

Zuko looked back at Suki and shook his head too.

“Let’s go inside,” he said.

“Okay,” said Sokka, and took his hand.

They walked through the door hand in hand like a couple, and Zuko basked in the moment, just a moment, before he took his hand back under the guise of searching his pockets for his phone. He knew his phone wasn’t there, he knew it was on Sokka’s bed. He’d left it there on purpose after he copied his card details into Sokka’s Uber account.

He hadn’t meant to think about _couple_. Because Sokka was his friend, and all there was on top of that was the way Sokka’s back muscles danced when he stretched his arms up to tap a low hanging beam. It wasn’t feelings, there weren’t supposed to be _feelings_.

He had been having this war inside himself for weeks.

“You want to snoop?” Sokka asked, and he put out a hand to steady himself on Zuko’s shoulder as he took off his shoes.

Zuko met Sokka’s grin, oh wonder. “Yeah.”

They went upstairs, floated through the heat of two hundred bodies crammed into a house that should have been more than big enough. The first room was _occupied_ , so they beat a hasty retreat back to the stairs, and Sokka glanced at the piece of rope tied across the bannisters that lead further up, wicked.

Down below, they heard Chan shout, “Hellooooo Chan Nation!”

They slipped under the rope, climbed the stairs as quickly and as quietly as they could. Zuko was a lot better at _quick_ and _quiet_ , and he danced ahead, challenging.

“Wait,” Sokka said, stopping on the last step. It was too late for Zuko, who was already on the landing.

“What?”

“I mean… You don’t think we’re going to find the skeletons of his parents, like, propped up in chairs?”

“…What?”

“Like in Psycho? Mrs Bates?”

“Sokka.”

“Well, when was the last time anyone saw Chan’s parents?”

Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose. “Last month, at a company dinner, at my – my father’s house.”

“Oh, great,” Sokka said, stepping onto the landing, finally, “so if we find them, they’ll be _decaying_.”

Zuko stared at him.

“Kidding! Come on.”

The rooms up here were different, cool, untouched. Zuko ran his hand along the wall, walked the whole way around the room. There wasn’t really anything here, no embarrassing baby photos, no stashes of jewellery, no skeletons.

“…pretty sure.”

Sokka froze.

“Swear to god, does no one know what _out of bounds_ means?”

Sokka mouthed _Chan_ , and Zuko rolled his eyes. It was obviously Chan, he knew it was Chan, Chan and whatever narc had sold them out.

“Whoever it is is _so_ kicked out.”

He was getting closer.

Zuko looked at Sokka, unsure. If they were kicked out, he was going to have to go back to his house, back to the silence.

Sokka whispered, “Trust me,” and then he pulled Zuko up against him, close, close, so close he couldn’t get closer. For a second his eyes were on Zuko’s lips and Zuko thought _he’s going to kiss me_ , and he was terrified.

Sokka’s lips touched his neck half a second before the door burst open, and Zuko ducked his head, embarrassed, but Sokka didn’t stop. He ran his mouth all the way down to Zuko’s collar bone, putting on a pretty show for their audience, and it was too much, it was way too much, but Zuko didn’t know what to do to extricate himself.

Sokka worked his way back up to Zuko’s jaw, then made a show of noticing Chan. “Oh, hey, man,” he said, lazily.

Zuko didn’t look at Chan. He didn’t want Chan to recognise him at all. He buried his face in Sokka’s neck and stayed there, breathing him in.

“Sokka?” said Chan, uncertain. “I didn’t know you were… I mean…”

Zuko kissed Sokka’s neck, feather light. Sokka squirmed. Zuko wondered if he could get away with giving Sokka a hickey right here and right now. Sokka squeezed his waist, but there was no way for Zuko to know if it was a warning or an invitation.

Except: in what world would it ever be an invitation?

“Oh, yeah,” Sokka was saying, and his voice was strained, just a little. Just enough for Zuko, who was an expert in Sokka’s voice, to notice. “I guess I’m not really…out?”

And it sounded so real, sounded so enticing. Zuko kissed his neck again, just a bit harder, and Sokka giggled, actually _giggled_ , and ran his hands up Zuko’s ribcage. Zuko hated every second of this fake moment, because it wasn’t his. It belonged to Sokka, and it wasn’t supposed to be him here with him. He never wanted it to end.

“Alright, well. I guess, um. Make it quick?”

And they were alone again. Sokka didn’t take his hands off Zuko’s ribs, but he stepped back enough to remove Zuko’s mouth from his neck. It was excruciating, standing there, trying to guess what was going on in Sokka’s head, but what else was there?

Finally, Sokka bit his lip, and stared past Zuko to the wall and said, “I am, you know. But I’m not… I’m not ready to be out.”

It felt an awful lot like a rejection.

“Hey,” Zuko said, softly, pushed his disappointment down deep inside. It was fleeting, anyway. “That’s okay. You know that’s okay, don’t you?”

Sokka hugged him tight, and when he pulled away, the teary, unsure Sokka was gone, and regular cheerful Sokka had returned so fully that Zuko almost believed him. Almost.

They went back downstairs.

The party was not different, and it was straight away like nothing had happened at all. Sokka snuck up behind Suki and wrapped his arms around her waist, ducked out of the way as her elbow came flying towards his nose. Then she let him pick her up and spin her around, shrieking, happy.

Zuko chewed the inside of his cheek and tried not to feel like an idiot.

“I’m glad you’re here, actually,” said Mai, and Zuko mostly didn’t jump out of his skin.

He didn’t look at her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I need to talk to you.”

“About?”

He could feel the stare she levelled on him. “Us.”

“What about us?”

“Are we still us?”

Zuko liked Mai. He liked her a lot. But not like that. “I’m not into you,” he said, and Jesus Christ, what a thing to say, but Mai just stepped in front of him to make sure he could see her roll her eyes.

“So? Since when has that had anything to do with it?”

Zuko stared at her. “Okay, I guess. If that’s what you want.”

She didn’t ask him if it was what he wanted, just said, “Good.”

Sokka’s hand closed around his bicep. “What’s going on, you guys?”

Mai looked at him coolly. She said, “We’re done. Call me, Zuko,” and then she walked away.

“I don’t think she likes me very much,” Sokka said, and it was an understatement, but Zuko could never in a million years articulate _why_ Mai didn’t like him. Sokka shrugged it off. “Dance with me.”

He said it like a command, like he knew Zuko would never refuse him. He was right.

They danced together, pressed close, until Sokka stepped away to dance with Suki, pressed close, hips against hips. Zuko’s fingernails ached.

And then Sokka was back, dancing with him. Hips against hips.

Zuko had nearly two years’ worth of mixed signals, signals he usually chalked up to Sokka’s flirty personality, but he’d never been more overwhelmed by them than he was tonight. Sokka came and went, came and went, and when he was dancing with Suki, Zuko looked on jealously, and when he was dancing with Zuko, Suki looked on sadly.

Zuko made a point of not meeting her eye.

Later, after the music was turned down but not off, after the scramble for shoes from the pile, it was Zuko Sokka climbed into an Uber with, it was Zuko’s lap he rested his head in. Suki wasn’t part of it, Zuko thought, so vicious inside himself that he felt ill.

He didn’t let himself stroke Sokka’s hair, didn’t let himself think about anything at all. Not through the ride, not through goodbye, not as he tucked himself into his bed. There wasn’t anything _to_ think about; the night was over, and in the morning it would all be forgotten or ignored.

Sokka once told Zuko that he was the only person left on earth who didn’t text. “I hate speaking on the phone,” he’d whined, way back at the start, but it was the one thing Zuko wouldn’t relent on. Texts were unsafe, easily read over a shoulder. Texts were damning.

Sokka’s compromise had always been to drop everything to talk in person.

Zuko had an incoming call from an unrecognised number, and it was almost as terrifying as a text. Maybe it was his mother, after six long years.

He answered, just in case. It wasn’t his mother.

It was Sokka, collect call, because he didn’t carry cash.

“Where are you?” Zuko asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Sokka said, in a way that sounded like it probably mattered a lot. Zuko didn’t ask why he wasn’t calling from his cell phone. “Can I come get you?”

Zuko bit his lip. “I’m supposed to be going to Uncle’s for afternoon tea.”

“I’ll drive you,” Sokka said, straight away. “And I’ll wait in the park across the street.”

He was strange and moody when he pulled into the driveway.

“Your chauffeur’s here,” called Azula, singsong bright.

Zuko ignored her.

“Hey,” he said, as he slipped into the passenger seat. He was afraid to say anything else, afraid to ask what it was that was bothering Sokka. He knew, he _knew_ that Sokka was a full person with his own thoughts and feelings and problems, but he usually hid them so well that, terrible as it was, Zuko forgot. Sokka with wild eyes and the skin around his fingernails chewed down to bleeding was not a Sokka Zuko was comfortable around.

They didn’t say anything, and Zuko didn’t look at Sokka. The guilt was eating him alive, but he couldn’t confront this, couldn’t be there for Sokka the way a friend should be. He didn’t know how.

He hardly waited for the car to pull to a complete stop before he threw the door open and fled. Maybe he would ask Uncle what to do, how to react like a real person. No, he would never do that. Maybe he’d get lucky and Uncle would figure him out anyway.

Whatever was wrong with Sokka had not righted itself while Zuko was inside his Uncle’s apartment. It seemed as though Sokka might not have moved at all, three hours stock still behind the driver’s wheel.

_Are you alright?_ Stupid, stupid, obviously not.

_What can I do to help?_ No, Zuko was too afraid of an answer, of being asked for his soul or of being asked for nothing at all.

He thought about what Sokka did for him on his lowest days, when shame and loathing overrode everything else he had inside. How Sokka tethered him to the promise of a bearable tomorrow.

He reached out and took Sokka’s hand, gently, and pressed it between his own. A touch that said _I love you_ , and _no rush, just come back to me when you can_. A touch that he fought to keep from turning desperate and ugly.

Sokka said, “Is your dad in?”

“No.”

“Can we stay out all night?”

Zuko thought about the way tomorrow, with its appointments and its lessons, would warp and stretch on forever if he said yes, and he thought about how he’d lie awake all night, filled to the top with regret, and the day would be wrecked anyway if he said no.

“Yes.”

They sat on the roof of Sokka’s car halfway beneath the underpass and let the night breathe around them. It had to, because Zuko wasn’t, and he didn’t think Sokka was either.

He watched Sokka, and he found he didn’t care if Sokka knew or not. This wasn’t like him; he glanced and memorised and glanced away, savouring. He didn’t look, he didn’t get to _look_.

Sokka leaned back on his elbows and glanced at Zuko. His gaze didn’t linger, but there was this strange unhurriedness to the way he looked away. Like it was inconsequential.

Zuko, really, really didn’t know what to say, and he knew that Sokka would not say anything until he did. He turned to the moon, begging. _Help, help, help!_

The moon said nothing.

He thought it: _I don’t know how to act around you like this. I need you to tell me_. He could never say it. _I need you_.

He said, “I think my dad is going to kick me out.”

Sokka looked at him, eyes halfway focused. “Your uncle will take you in, won’t he?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t say, _it still hurts_.

“Lie down,” Sokka said. “Look at the stars.”

Zuko did, and he did.

“They’re not as bright down here as they are back up home.”

_Home. Home. Somewhere Zuko had not been and had never existed, home_. Zuko had known, in theory, that Sokka grew up elsewhere, up in Nunavut he thought, maybe. It was everywhere, in the taped Inuktitut radio shows always playing, volume low, in his grandmother's kitchen, in the art around their house, in the way he refused to let even a single derogatory comment slide, whether it was directed at him or not.

Zuko thought, shamefully, for the very first time, that it must have been a very terrible thing, whatever drove his family away from their home.

“Sometimes I think,” Sokka said, so quietly that Zuko didn’t know if he was even meant to hear it, “that things will never make as much sense here as they made there.”

“You were a kid. Maybe it’s just growing up.”

Sokka hummed. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He lifted his hand, pointing at the sky. “Cancer should be right there, but there’s too much light pollution.”

Zuko didn’t look at the sky. He looked at that hand, slender and freckled. Constellations of a different type. Sokka told him about more, more stars that he could not see. Zuko didn’t really care about stars, but he cared that Sokka cared about stars, and he cared that Sokka was trying to share it with him.

There were so many stars that he had never seen, and there were so many sides to Sokka that he had never seen. He wondered if maybe there were just some things in the world that weren’t meant for a boy like him.

Sokka lowered his hand, dropped it straight down like holding it there had exhausted him. His wrist thudded against the roof beneath them, and the sound hung in the air, muddy and ominous. Zuko watched him open his mouth, then shut it again.

Zuko reached over and touched the back of Sokka’s hand, softly, ever so softly. Sokka didn’t fidget, not like Zuko did, not moving around restlessly, purposelessly. He wasn’t still, by any means, but it was a living movement, not jagged, not to stop him from going insane.

He went still the moment Zuko’s fingers touched his skin, pure still, unnatural still. After a long, long moment, he turned his hand over, and his fingers brushed against Zuko’s. It was the only part of him that was moving, not his chest up and down, not his face, eyes shut. Slowly, almost like he was challenging himself to go as slowly as he could, he took Zuko’s hand, and brought it to rest just above his heart.

Zuko had been wrong, he thought, so, so wrong. Lying there with Sokka’s hand pressed down on his, he could feel Sokka’s heartbeat, hammering away like it had a death wish, and it was not still.

Sokka’s other hand moved fast, untucking Zuko’s shirt, sliding up his chest, finding his heart and burying itself there.

It was entirely possible it hadn’t happened fast at all, that it just seemed fast in comparison, or that Zuko’s brain had short circuited and removed half the frames. He wondered idly if he should do the same, should sneak and steal a minute of skating his fingers along cool skin, but Sokka’s other hand was still like a cage on top of his, and anyway. He could not trust himself.

He was struck by the _need_ to talk, to try to put the enormity of what he felt into words, to try and to keep going until Sokka _understood_. He needed… he _needed_. He had no idea where to start.

_Some days I see you and I think you might be the sun. Some days I see you and I think you_ must _be the sun. All I need is for you to promise you’ll never leave me behind_. Oh, no, no no no, that was way too much to ask.

Sokka opened his eyes, and relaxed his grip on Zuko’s hand, and Zuko was terrified by it, by what it meant that he thought he should stop holding it there. Should he take his hand away? Sokka wasn’t moving _his_ hand from Zuko’s chest. Sokka looked at him with the ghost of a frown, looked down to where Zuko’s heart was screaming down the highway at a hundred miles an hour. If Zuko could feel Sokka’s heartbeat over his shirt, Sokka could definitely feel his, skin on skin.

He couldn’t. He couldn’t say anything. It wasn’t the right time, Sokka was upset about something, deep and traumatic and private, and Zuko knew what that was like. You couldn’t – you couldn’t just dump that on someone. Maybe Zuko didn’t always know when he was crossing a line, but he knew that.

He compromised. “One day I think that we’re gonna have everything we want.”

Sokka met his gaze, pained. “You promise?”

Zuko pressed his free hand over Sokka’s, his shirt between them the only barrier against the swell of _everything_ that rushed at him every moment of every day. “Yeah, I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> couple of things:  
> 1) go listen to there is a light that never goes out by the smiths (where the plot vaguely comes from) and contact high by architecture in helsinki (where the title comes from) for full immersion. not necessary but very nice !
> 
> 2) spare a thought for me in december looking at my spotify top songs 2020 and finding there is a light that never goes out in the top 10 because i listened to it on repeat for this for a week
> 
> 3) i would LOVE to talk. find me on tumblr at [rippeduncleiroh](https://rippeduncleiroh.tumblr.com/)


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